1. Field of the Inventions
The field of the invention relates generally to communication networks and more particularly to the routing and handling of a plurality of communications based on a variety of factors.
2. Background Information
In today's communication age, a variety of what used to be face-to-face transactions now occur remotely via the telephone, email, or some other electronic communication medium. As a result, large organizations must be able to communicate with their customers or constituents in a variety of ways, e.g., via telephone, email, fax, the Internet, etc. This places a tremendous burden on such organizations to handle the communications in an efficient, effective, and reliable manner. Failure to do so can be very costly. For example, organizations that fail to optimally manage their communications can incur increased costs in dealing with the communications or lost business due to their unresponsiveness. Thus, it is very important that organizations handle their communications as effectively as possible.
Organizations with more than trivial customer communication needs, for example, typically use call centers to handle the communications and to organize their sales and service teams. A conventional call center comprises a telephony server configured to receive a plurality of incoming telephone calls that are routed to various operators, or agents, for handling. The call routing is often under the control of a software application and, therefore, is accomplished via some amount of computer automation. A simple example would be a software program that routes an incoming call to the next available agent. More complex software can, for example, be configured to screen incoming communications, forward them to agents with appropriate skills, and maintain records related to the handling of the incoming communication.
Thus, when an incoming communication is received by the call center it is routed to an appropriate agent. The agent necessarily must have the appropriate equipment to handle the communication. For example, if the incoming communication is a telephone call, then the agent should have telephone equipment to handle the call. In addition, the agents often have some type of computer terminal or monitor interfaced with the call center on which they can receive information related to the incoming communication or with which they can access relevant information for handling the incoming communication. For example, the terminal can display an originating telephone number associated with an incoming telephone call. The terminal may also be used to access account information for the caller.
A conventional call center, therefore, generally comprises a telephony server configured to receive and route incoming communications, an application server interfaced with the telephony server and configured to run applications for automating the call routing, and a plurality of agents interfaced with the telephony server via communications handling equipment and possibly some type of data terminal. There are actually three types of personnel who typically interface with a conventional call center: 1) the agents who handle the incoming communications; 2) supervisors who monitor and assist agents; and 3) administrators who install and configure software and hardware necessary to handle the incoming communications.
A conventional call center can be very expensive because it must house all of the call center personnel and associated call handling equipment and terminals as well as the telephony and applications servers. The centralized nature of conventional call centers can have another negative consequence as well, in that a single failure or error can bring down all or a substantial portion of the call center. Down time can have a severe negative impact because a call center is often the main point of communication between a large organization and its customers or constituents. Even a brief interruption can result in numerous missed communications. Accordingly, it is important that a call center be highly reliable in order to prevent significant service interruption.